tish Islands. A board table, long enough for three
chairs at each side besides the presidential chair at the head and an
ordinary chair at the foot, occupies the breadth of the room. On the
table, opposite every chair, a small switchboard with a dial. There is
no fireplace. The end wall is a silvery screen nearly as large as a pair
of folding doors. The door is on your left as you face the screen; and
there is a row of thick pegs, padded and covered with velvet, beside it.

A stoutish middle-aged man, good-looking and breezily genial, dressed
in a silk smock, stockings, handsomely ornamented sandals, and a gold
fillet round his brows, comes in. He is like Joyce Burge, yet also like
Lubin, as if Nature had made a composite photograph of the two men.
He takes off the fillet and hangs it on a peg; then sits down in the
presidential chair at the head of the table, which is at the end
farthest from the door. He puts a peg into his switchboard; turns
the pointer on the dial; puts another peg in; and presses a button.
Immediately the silvery screen vanishes; and in its place appears, in
reverse from right to left, another office similarly furnished, with a
thin, unamiable man similarly dressed, but in duller colors, turning
over some documents at the table. His gold fillet is hanging up on a
similar peg beside the door. He is rather like Conrad Barnabas, but
younger, and much more commonplace._

BURGE-LUBIN. Hallo, Barnabas!

BARNABAS [_without looking round_] What number?

BURGE-LUBIN. Five double x three two gamma. Burge-Lubin.

_Barnabas puts a plug in number five; turns his pointer to double x; and
another plug in 32; presses a button and looks round at Burge-Lubin, who
is now visible to him as well as audible._

BARNABAS [_curtly_] Oh! That you, President?

BURGE-LUBIN. Yes. They told me you wanted me to ring you up. Anything
wrong?

BARNABAS [_harsh and querulous_] I wish to make a protest.

BURGE-LUBIN [_good-humored and mocking_] What! Another protest! Whats
wrong now?

BARNABAS. If you only knew all the protests I havnt made, you would be
surprised at my patience. It is you who are always treating me with the
grossest want of consideration.

BURGE-LUBIN. What have I done now?

BARNABAS. You have put me down to go to the Record Office today to
receive that American fellow, and do the honors of a ridiculous cinema
show. That is not the business of the Accountant General: it is the
business of the Presiden